I seem to be simultaneously both desperately sad because of Loki’s death, and unable to believe 100% that he is really dead.
I see no problem with continuing this state of affairs indefinitely.
None at all.
I think I believe it 100%, but the fact that I feel sick when I see further confirmations that he isn’t coming back indicates that on some level I don’t fully believe it. I hate my own subconscious optimism.
It doesn’t mean Brolin (and Thanos) didn’t enjoy crunching the Hulk
with a cheap-shot kick — “I love that Thanos uses a knee. That was
great.” And Brolin was cool with choking out demigod Loki (Tom
Hiddleston), a longtime Marvel favorite. All of this in the first
10 minutes of “Infinity War.”
Brolin says he did have sympathy for Hiddleston, who was “obsessed” with nailing what looks to be his last scene as Loki.
“He had been with that character for so long. And he’s so
lauded for doing it,” says Brolin. “Tom was so vulnerable at that
moment. So choking him out wasn’t the most fun thing I have ever done.”
But Brolin loves the fan furor on the internet over his lightning rod characters, especially Thanos.
“On Instagram people are posting things like, ‘I hate
you,’ ” says Brolin. “That’s fantastic. I’m, like, the one guy who
smiles when he sees that. It’s like, ‘It worked.’ ”
“What looks to be his last scene”? What happened to the flashbacks in Avengers 4? Were those filmed earlier? Or does it mean last in the fictional timeline, since clearly Marvel has no intention of using whatever time travel shenanigans happen in Avengers 4 to bring back Loki along with the dusted folks?
P.S. clearly Josh Brolin has more respect and compassion for Tom and his/Loki’s fans than the assholes responsible for producing the enormous stinking turd that was “Infinity War” (i.e., Markus & McFeely, the Russos, and Feige).
Yep, Tom 1.0 definitely knows how to keep secrets.
Tom 2.0 is a sweetheart, though.
Look, as a fucking grown up, I’m ready to face it if it’s true. As a fan girl, I’m still hanging onto to the fact that if he hid Loki’s death from us for two years, he could he hiding further information about his return.
^^^ THIS
Yeah, I fucking wish. But between the gratuitous graphic gruesomeness of his death, that highly unusual bit of fourth-wall-breaking (“No resurrections this time”), and the way they allowed Loki’s character to be neutered in both Ragnarok and Infinity War, the powers that be at Marvel Studios have made it quite clear how they feel about Loki and his fans.
OR, How I Can’t Stop Thinking About Loki’s Grotesque End in Infinity War and Why It Doesn’t Sit Right In the Cinematic Universe
I get the WHY. But not the HOW.
Constantly thinking about this is what inspired me actually the other day to writeup this post (re: Zara in Jurassic World) because that was the last time a movie death made me feel queasy and I have seen SO MANY MOVIES in the last three years.
It’s not like characters in both JP and the MCU aren’t disposed of all the time but generally films follow a rule of the punishment fitting the crime.This BirthMoviesDeath article elaborates on this concept and the Jurassic deaths really well and aligns with how I’m going to be talking about Loki here. This isn’t a rule based in life obviously or even in all movies, but it is established in popcorn blockbusters which these indisputably are. In Zara’s case, there was exactly zero respect for the fact that she was just a flighty nanny when the movie ran her through an absolute horror show. And it stood out like a sore thumb.
In Loki’s case, it’s obvious that this film’s “reasoning” for his dying was to fuel Thor who didn’t really need it and to show off their Bigger Stronger Newer Villain. Fine. I anticipated all of that. It’s somewhat lazy, but it is an effective shorthand for those story points.
The disturbing thing here though is Loki hasn’t been a proper villain in years. In fact, in 2017 he moved to full on hero status in the last act of Ragnarok— and even when he was at Peak Villain, he was not a torturer. TELL THAT TO AGENT COULSON OR THE ONE-EYED DOCTOR IN GERMANY, LAUREN! I WILL GET TO BOTH, HUSH. So that’s what makes his death so disproportionately upsetting. It is, for lack of a better term, overkill.
His largest scale villainy was the invasion in the first Avengers where his personal kills were instant blasts of energy, and presumably the fallout of destroyed buildings. The former isn’t in the torture range, the latter’s impact is cinematically blunted by the Marvel universe rarely showing the injuries in large scale invasions or going to great lengths to have their heroes evacuate the affected areas and that distinction matters here.
So let’s go through how it DID go down and how it could have gone without leaving the audience needlessly wincing five minutes in and weeks after.
Sorry in advance by the way, because in the end of my analysis and my suggestions for how this might have been better handled, Loki’s neck is still broken.
To date myself, I said Loki got “Jenny-Calendar’ed”. And they could have easily done this as quickly (you still get to use that gross sound effect, Russo team!) but INSTEAD we have: (And if you don’t feel like reliving this, go ahead and skip over the bullet points)
Loki is picked up by the throat and begins kicking like a helpless animal
We watch as Loki’s eyes bulge and he struggles to speak
He does get out a final line though his face is practically blue
Thanos cracks his neck with his thumb and a sickening sound effect
The camera does not cut away, we see Loki’s face and frame go slack
Thanos does not drop Loki, but instead walks the ragdoll-like body in frame, to drop him in front of his brother.
Loki brandishes the eye snatching device and brings it down upon the terrified doctor but the film cuts away from the victim and focuses on Loki’s grin as the onlookers scatter. The most we see of this act is an obscured shot of the German man’s body twitching (also, if I recall correctly, the blu-ray captions say “squelching sounds.” Ick).
I bring this up only because I was struggling to find an act that Loki did on screen where what he dealt out was comparably as grotesque as to what happened to him. Only the first Avengers didn’t amplify this violence by—and you could just IMAGINE the outcry that would have happened if instead—Loki pulled out the device, he rammed it into the doctor’s face, we then STAYED on the doctor and watched his eye be excised from its socket. When Loki is done in this version, he would push the body off the table and show the isolated eyeball to nearby innocents and we would hold on a closeup on the German’s corpse.
IF this had happened, I would have said watching Loki getting choked out was fair cinematic game.
Additionally, Loki’s stabbing of Agent Coulson was literally cinematically declawed. OUTTAKES:
Catch the difference? The filmmakers removed the impaling scepter tip from going all the way through in the final product because it was unnecessarily violent for getting the point (harhar) across in this PG-13 comic book film. Here, the point was to unite the Avengers against this evil and taking out Phil galvanized them on a more personal level. In the meantime, it didn’t needlessly maim Agent Coulson. You felt sorry for him, but not nauseated. (Sidenote: Poor Thor having a front row on both of these deaths.) (Second Sidenote: Remember when Loki could teleport away from problems as illustrated in the above scene? Huh.)
Moving on. So going by the premise that Loki just had to die to similarly motivate Thor to vengeance on Thanos, how might have Infinity War have HONORABLY discharged Loki, so to speak?
My thoughts:
Loki pulls his dagger on Thanos, who then grabs his wrist as we saw.
Thanos makes plain that he means to kill him (you could even keep that same snarky line spitting “undying” back in Loki’s face)
Thanos wraps his Gauntleted hand around Loki’s throat (not lifting or choking), while the space gem glows brightly indicating Loki’s teleporting means are stunted and he is truly stuck. (Like how they explained Vision’s failed phasing later)
Loki, confidently, ANGRILY and in clear voice delivers his “You’ll never be a god”
Thanos *maybe* gets in a quick retort or *maybe* throws some snide remark in Thor’s direction.
(WIDE DISTANT SHOT) Thanos snaps Loki’s neck, loudly and quickly
Loki’s body falls swiftly down before Thor
You might disagree with my specifics or have your own ideas. I’m no screenwriter. But in my scenario, Loki is not made to suffer, the audience doesn’t have to see a graphic depiction of strangulation AND Thanos is still shown to be stronger than the perceived ‘reigning’ MCU Villain. Also, by utilizing the stones or making reference to their impacting the fight against Loki, you’re not inexplicably stripping Loki of his hitherto demonstrated wide array of tricks.
Did I seriously just say hitherto demonstrated?
Agreed, with one correction: Loki’s largest-scale villainy was the attempted destruction of Jotunheim. We don’t know how many Jotnar were actually killed, but we do see the impact of the Bifrost breaking up the ground and causing structures to collapse like a massive earthquake, and we see Jotnar screaming and running from the spreading destruction. But of course no one in the MCU mentions that again – it’s all about Loki’s attack on Earth – because they don’t really want us to care about Frost Giants; if we did, we might place more weight on the wholesale slaughter that *Thor* perpetrated at the beginning of the movie. But that wouldn’t do; they need Thor to be completely absolved of previous sins so he can assume Unproblematic Hero status. Meanwhile, nothing Loki does to save various worlds can make up for his earlier crimes.
NB: I don’t hate Thor, I don’t think he’s evil, I don’t think it’s bad that he (or Tony Stark, or Wanda Maximoff) can be considered a hero after having done terrible things. I’m also quite willing to grant that Loki’s record is worse than Thor’s. But no one even mentions Thor’s unwarranted aggression again (except that “In my youth I courted war” line – that was LAST YEAR, ffs), while the “villain” label, and apparently the inevitable fate of a villain, follows Loki forever.
Same, @saygoodbye-not-thisday. And I still think they wanted to dispose of Loki as quickly, brutally, and humiliatingly as possible as a kind of revenge: they couldn’t stand that this morally ambiguous, unconventionally masculine character is more popular and attracts more female interest than Thor, their approved male power fantasy; and they probably think the silly Hiddleston fangirls (who are too immature to go for one of the Real Men they’re selling) are bad for Marvel’s image (though of course they’ll take our money before punching us in the gut).
Why was Loki’s * alleged * death the most brutal and disgusting scene in the movie?
The expression in his eyes. It hurts so bad. ;_;
edited with photoshop*
Because Marvel hates him and his fans. They can’t figure him out because he doesn’t fit neatly into a hero/villain schema; they think his fans are just a bunch of airheaded horny fangirls, and Marvel is not here to service female desire unless it falls in line with cishet male power fantasies. They killed him brutally for shock value (to show how dangerous Thanos is, because Loki’s attempt to fight him was *so* effective…) and for their unimaginative idea of what Thor’s arc and motivation should be.
Anyone else felt this line was said directly for them during the movie ? Like : « yes you we know you we have your Tumblr and we know you are going to deny that is dead and obsessed on all the theories that he survives so don’t waste your time really » 😂☹️☹️☹️
But i am still like :
Yeah. I felt personally attacked.
The entire death scene, and that line added was made most definitely, especially, just for us.
We’re not the fans they’re looking for.
Yeah the thing about that though. A large chunk of the Thor fanbase are simply Loki fans. Loki basically carried the first two films and the film Avengers film. And I mean no disrespect to Mr. Hemsworth. It’s just that TH is THAT compelling. Loki was completely emasculated and nerfed in the third Thor film, but bazillions of Loki fans went to see it anyway, because Loki.
It’s peculiar concept for filmmakers to punish their fans for liking their movies for the wrong reasons.
And yet they do it. Comic book writers deliberately “douchebro” characters to alienate female fans. No girls in the treehouse.
Anyone else felt this line was said directly for them during the movie ? Like : « yes you we know you we have your Tumblr and we know you are going to deny that is dead and obsessed on all the theories that he survives so don’t waste your time really » 😂☹️☹️☹️
But i am still like :
Yeah. I felt personally attacked.
The entire death scene, and that line added was made most definitely, especially, just for us.
“Loki’s death makes sense. His story was at an end. What would they have even done with him moving forward?”
I see this a lot, and it’s funny. It’s funny in the same way that people still believing that Loki is a villain is painfully comical. There’s such a lack of understanding for this character and so many people’s brains just seem to shut down completely when his future in the MCU is brought up.
So, what might we have gotten if the Russos hadn’t chosen to off him for cheap shock value?
An exploration of his heritage.
Now imagine if Captain America or Brace Banner had some incredibly powerful hidden ability that the MCU had not yet utilized or ever touched upon since it’s original discovery. You’d expect for Marvel to eventually explore this at some point, right? Then why is this somehow not the case with Loki’s undeveloped frost giant abilities?
Working with the Avengers.
As soon as I walked out of the theater in 2012, my mind was wondering what it would be like if Loki had been fighting alongside the Avengers rather than against them. Ragnarok had set up the potential for just that: Loki being forced to ally himself with his former enemies – Cue the snarky banter with Tony Stark, a magical team up with Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange, surprising even himself when he instinctively shoves Clint out of the way of an oncoming attack… THIS would have brought his original arc full circle. If they really wanted to kill him off, then he should have died while protecting the planet he’d once attempted to rule. Though really, why does a villain need to die to be redeemed? You shouldn’t follow the norm just because it’s the norm. That’s just lazy writing.
Betraying Thanos.
It’s kind of Loki’s “thing”. He betrays people who have put their trust in him. Usually it’s the good guys who pay the price for his deceptions, but wouldn’t it have been interesting to see Loki’s talents turned upon the big bad? Giving Loki the role that Mephisto had in the comics (serving as an advisor to Thanos before betraying him) would have been ideal in this scenario. In no way is attacking Thanos head-on with a tiny knife intelligent. Loki should’ve been better than this.
Reconciliation with Thor.
There is no Thor without Loki. There is no Loki without Thor. Ragnarok gave us two brothers who were finally at peace with each other in the end and prepared to move forward together. An exploration of their relationship as siblings really trying to get along despite their differences would have been a breath of fresh air, to be honest. Thor is king, but every king needs an advisor. What better advisor to have than your own brother?
Mastering his own mind.
Hiddleston has claimed that something he would have liked to explore with Loki and see the character do if he’d survived Infinity War was to conquer his own mind, because Loki doesn’t know his own mind. He’s mentally unstable and plagued by feelings of self-disgust. Hiddleston has outright claimed that Loki deep down doesn’t really like himself. The character finally coming to terms with himself and discovering his place in the universe could have been a nice arc for the character to complete moving forward, perhaps fully settling into the role of anti-hero and accepting that his chaotic side can still be used for good rather than evil.
The Marvel cinematic universe’s first openly LGBTQ character.
The Russos claim that Marvel wants to work with stories that speak to where society is at today, and yet they still chose to kill one of their only two queer-coded characters. That’s not what today’s society wants. Why not make MCU history and give Loki a boyfriend? Hell, why not make cinematic history and let Loki be openly genderfluid? They could have done for LGBTQ people with Loki what was done for people of color with Black Panther. They could have given a marginalized group of people much needed representation. Instead, Loki, a bisexual and genderfluid character was killed to move along one of Marvel’s many cishet characters’ revenge arcs.
You make too much sense, which is how I know all your proposals are way beyond Marvel.
“While Infinity War played him right in not betraying his brother in the end, the rest of Loki’s death makes little sense for his character. Over the years we’ve learned that Loki is a genius sorcerer with a deep self-preservation streak and an endless bag of tricks.
“Then, in Infinity War, we’re supposed to believe that he would choose to attack Thanos with a tiny knife. This is like bringing idiocy to a gunfight. Loki is the only person on the Asgardian vessel who knows exactly who Thanos is and what he’s capable of, and yet the audience is meant to accept that his final move would be a stupid one with zero chance of success.
“It doesn’t fit, and it’s not worthy of the character or Hiddleston. Loki’s death is also the most egregiously violent in Infinity War, like the Russos just really needed to twist those screws on Thor’s very bad day. [My editorial insertion: or rather, on Loki’s silly fangirls.]
“[…] And while many of the dusted Infinity War folks will somehow be resurrected in Avengers 4, Thor’s characters died real deaths and are almost certainly not coming back. This seems like a huge waste, especially if all of this murder is merely there to make Thor sad and angry and committed to bringing down Thanos. Let’s be real—he would’ve done that anyway. The MCU didn’t need to remove absolutely everyone associated with him so callously.”
The next… chapter? Did Tom just secretly confirm that Loki isn’t dead after all?!
I’m still skeptical. It could be a very short “chapter,” and the sense in which it “honors what has come before” might just be that Loki is a boring “good guy” now and recognizes that his only purpose in life is to sacrifice himself for Thor (again). And he does say “it will be surprising for the audience in terms of what they expect next” – which could be code for, “Surprise! He dies in the first 5 minutes, way more stupidly than you ever would have expected him to, and that’s it for your favorite character.”
Yeah I am extremely skeptical that this “you’ll be surprised” nonsense is anything but a red herring. I’m still not 100% certain we’ll even see Loki in A4; has anyone seen any other set pictures besides the one? Remember he was supposed to have a cameo in AoU and that ended up getting cut. I’m maintaining a zero faith policy tbh, all this theorizing is frankly giving Marvel too much credit. Maybe the new fan campaign to bring Loki back will work, maybe it won’t, but odds are even if it does they’ll just let writers/directors who don’t like him or understand him continue to butcher his character.
Oh yeah, fair point about the AoU scene. And I completely agree about the zero faith policy. Except for “Spider-Man” and “Black Panther,” all the MCU movies that have come out since 2016 have been huge disappointments. And I absolutely do not trust anyone there with Loki’s character.
Loki is the Philosopher King 